It’s over four years since this blog featured a proper visit to the Netherlands (Maastricht, April 2012) but I seem fated to visit Schiphol airport on a regular basis. My flight to Russia saw me positioned in a seat right above the entrance to the hold, so I got to watch these guys do their jobs while settling in for the second of three flights in one day….
Things have been happening in the outside world of course, but on a purely personal level it’s been an uneventful period: 12 of the last 16 pictures taken in Hebden Bridge. Went on a walk today mainly to give myself something to photograph; the buttercups helped it work out. I’m off on my travels again tomorrow however.
John makes his second appearance on the blog after the picture taken at his place of work three years ago. But is he really off-duty? Looks like he’s looking wistfully at the competitor establishment across the street, somehow.
Exciting times in the household as the jigsaw map of Brighton that was a Christmas present is finally finished five months later. With all three of us present to witness this stellar event, you can tell it’s the half-term holiday. Life doesn’t get more uneventful than this.
First trip into Manchester for nearly two weeks. Last week I stayed at home and worked, which was the easier option due to the closure of Victoria station. Half-above the station stands Manchester Arena, scene of what we could refer to as ‘The Events’ of Monday 22nd May but which one might also reasonably call ‘the slaughter of 22 people by a psychopath’. *Sigh*. And I had decided to try not to mention it.
I know it’s a cheat to take photos of a movie screen but I don’t care. This was the major event of my day, a film I have admired for a long time now, and my first chance to see it on the big screen thanks to the BFI reissuing a restored print this year. If you’ve never seen it — go! If you’ve already seen it, well, go and see it again, because you know it’s a brilliant movie. (The book’s a favourite of mine too: as this shot proves.)
I love this scene in particular. Is there any doubt here that Jack Nicholson isn’t ‘acting’…. he has utterly become Randall Patrick McMurphy, he is straining with every sinew and muscle in his body to lift that damn control unit and escape from the institution in which he is incarcerated?
The family portrait theme of the weekend continues with my younger sister Vicki paying a visit and making, as a result, what I calculate to be only her second appearance on the blog. She seemed interested in my big world atlas for some reason, perhaps planning a trip — certainly I have been in Hebden for what seems like a while, although June is going to involve more distant locations.
Joe’s first appearance on this blog was on its 9th day, September 3rd 2011, in which he was pictured in this room doing much the same thing as here, drinking a fruit juice (always still — Joe doesn’t do fizzy drinks). He — and the room — look somewhat different now, 2,094 days later.
The good weather broke, to some extent, although there was not the rain that the gathering clouds and rumbles of thunder promised. Dramatic-looking skies though. This was the last sighting of the sun today.
Dropping down from Sergeant Man to Tarn Crag, in Easdale in the Lake District, I saw ahead a small herd of young deer, about three hundred yards ahead. I stopped to get the camera out. They stopped and looked at me for a while; I mean, look at this picture, they clearly know I’m there. They sized me up. I sized them up. Got a few shots. Then off they went, to do whatever they do during the daytime, and I carried on my way. Everyone was satisfied with the transaction I think.
